Tag: gifts

Win a £40 Voucher to Spend at TinyMe

I do love the personalized gifts for kids on TinyMe.co.uk. They have everything from bags to stationery to clothing to name labels. We got one of their duffle bags a couple of years ago and it’s still going strong, my daughter uses it for her PE kit, the amount of stuff they need in primary school is nuts; including indoor and outdoor kit plus two pairs of shoes. Goodness knows how we remember everything each week. We also often use it for weekends away, squashes nicely in the boot of the car

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The lovely folks at Tinyme are offering my readers a chance to win a £40 voucher to spend on some of their goodies.

Whilst I was writing this post, instead of doing my work, I had a really good look through their site and am loving the reusable sandwich bags, no more fighting with plastic bags or the roll of clingfilm in the morning. I guess you just turn them inside out and give them a good wipe.

My daughter is a bit of a magpie when it comes to Stationery, which I think is true about a lot of girls here age. Apparently, you can never have enough diaries/journals. One of her favourite things to do when her friends come around is to do a bit of diary writing, goodness knows what they write in them, but I do here a lot of giggling going on. Tempted to get her a personalised journal for Christmas.

I also noticed that they have an entire section of FREE printables including some for Christmas, the activities are rather swish unlike a lot of the naff printables you get on line. I love FREE! I’m definitely going to do a few of them with my daughter in the build up to Christmas. However, I have a sneaking suspicion mine won’t look like theirs.

Enter to Win!

To enter the competition simply use the rafflecopter form below. Competition Ends on the 1st of Dec, UK residents 18+ only. The full Terms and Conditions can be found on the bottom of the form.

I was really hoping to write this post last week, as it was National Book Day but time got away on me and we read the most delightful book, the Little Girl Who Lost her Name by David Cadji Newby.

It all starts with a little girl who wakes up in the morning to find that her name has gone AWOL and this is where the adventure begins. She goes on a mission to find the letters of her missing name, each letter has a fantastic character and illustration including a Miserable Mermaid and an Ant Eating Aardvark plus a few more.

I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, but my daughter worked out halfway through the book that it was in fact spelling her own name. The look of surprise and excited was brilliant.

The books were officially launched last week and can be personalised for Boys and Girls. I honestly think they would make a brilliant present (£16.99).

These slippers made us laugh a lot! As you can see, as you walk along the ears go up and down. The shocked expression on the Zebra’s face is hilarious. They also have Sharks, Dinosaurs and Kitties.

Unfortunately, the first pair that were sent to us stopped working after about 5 minutes, but we were sent a replacement pair tout de suite and haven’t had any problems.

I was really hoping to get a video of or 5 year old dancing in them but my docking station has decided to call it quits. So you’ll have to use your imagination. We were a bit dubious about her climbing the stairs in them, but they seem fine.

Overall, I think we did fairly well on the present front, not too much tat. In a way, we are lucky that my family is overseas and posting presents is extortionate. So they, tend to send money for me to buy presents for our daughter. I really like this as it allows me to control what she gets and I tend to know what she needs/would like. We did our best not to spoil her but in hindsight she did get a lot. Here are her top 5 Christmas Presents.

Number 5

A Princess Tent from Santa, as a family we were torn on how to handle gifts from Santa. Too be honest, we didn’t want him taking all the credit for our hard work. At one point we were just going to have him bring the stocking, but in the end we decided one main present from him would be good.

The Princess Tent is designed for the garden but for the time being, we are going to keep it inside until the spring. At first, I was a bit worried that it would be too small for her but boy was I wrong! At the moment, it’s dominating our rather small lounge. It was fairly easy to put together and you can feel the quality, the canvas cover is robust and the wooden frame is sturdy. At the moment we haven’t secured it with the screws as we may want to put it up and down. As you can see it’s gorgeous and I’m sure her and her friends will have fun playing in it.

Number 4

Kerplunk – a game that I loved to play as a child; it’s changed a bit but still great fun. We’ve really been enjoying playing it as a family, but we’ve noticed that my daughter has a very competitive streak and likes to change the rules as we go along. I think she gets this from her Grandmother who is fiercely competitive when it comes to games.

Number 3

My daughter’s main present, after a lot of thought, was a Puppet Theatre, but what I really like about this one is when you turn it around it turns into a shop. At the moment she tends to prefer the shop. We spent the evening playing Toy Store; however, I find her shop very expensive as everything costs £50 and she doesn’t take IOUs!

Number 2

Prior to Christmas, I tried to ask her what she wanted for Christmas and I really struggled to get something sensible out of her. The last time I asked she said she would like a yellow dress, red handbag and pink bunny costume. Luckily, a friend of mine who has a penchant for Prada and the colour red jumped in and offered to sort out the red hand bag. Phew!

Number 1

To go with her Puppet Theatre we bought a collection of Hand Puppets from the Puppet Company. As she is currently in a Princess phase we opted for Fairytale Characters. As you can see they are absolutely gorgeous. Mummy and daddy could use some work on their puppetry skills, but we are getting the hang of it. Last night we did renditions of ‘we’re off to see the Wizard’, ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’, ‘if you want to be a Prince stand up tall’ and ‘I’m a Little Princess’ sung to the tune of I’m a Little Teapot. We’re looking forward to many more productions.

Wishing you all the best in 2012!

Disclosure: For the record Santa did not bring the Princess Tent. It was a gift from the company.

My hubby took this photo of Madame when we were on holiday in Wales recently. I love it. I hate to admit it but he always manages to get better photos than me on his iphone. He thinks its skill and struts around like a proud peacock, but I’m convinced he has different camera software on his iphone. Anyhow, we had it put onto a canvas for our photo display in the kitchen which some of you may have spotted in my Kitchen Tour.

Unfortunately, when my mum was here recently from Canada she took a liking to it, so much that she took it with her when she left!!! Now there was a gaping hole in our display.

Coincidentally, the team at Bags of Love contacted us and asked us if we wanted to review one of their canvases! Result.

This isn’t the first time I’ve used Bags of Love for canvases. Quite a few years ago I had three done of some stunning photos I took when on holiday in Jordan. Unfortunately, it involved my ex so they have been relegated to the loft. Normally, I would have buzzed them but they are such good quality I can’t bring myself too. I’m thinking I can use the frames for something else.

The new canvas arrived and we are truly impressed with it. It does seem a bit darker than the last one but that’s down to the poor quality of the image and not the folks at Bags of Love. I also like the fact that it’s not as deep as the other one, the other one was a couple of inches thick (sorry for the imperial measure). The service was also very quick. I think it arrived in a couple of days. I’m not sure how much this one would have cost but I just had a quick look on the site and the prices look reasonable and they have a 2 for 1 deal on at the moment.